Event Details

Dr. Dusan Bogunovic is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Department of Pediatrics and Mindich Child Health and Development Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He obtained his PhD in Immunology at NYU Medical School where he studied innate immune signaling in dendritic cells as a function of their ability to mount an adaptive immune response against melanoma. That work has inspired two clinical trials. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at The Rockefeller University with Jean-Laurent Casanova where he studied how host genetics contribute to infection susceptibility. Subsequently, after starting his own lab, his group defined an essential role for free intracellular ISG15 and USP18 in regulation of Type I Interferon-induced inflammation (Nature, 2015), and identified USP18-deficient individuals and detailed the molecular mechanisms underlying their Type I IFN-mediated inflammation (JEM, 2016). More recently, his group discovered that ISG15-deficient individuals have augmented anti-viral responses (Nature Commun, 2016). This discovery, which is now followed up by the Bogunovic lab in developing ISG15 inhibitors as broad-spectrum antivirals, was included in the "top ten discoveries with the potential to change the world" by Scientific American and lead him serve as an advisor to Mr. Bill Gates on the current state of antivirals in 2017. Dr. Bogunovic has received several awards including the 2015 Milstein Award for Young Investigators by the International Cytokine and Interferon Society, the 2016 Young Investigator Award by the American Society for Microbiology and the 2017 Lamport Research Award by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Bogunovic’s talk will outline his research interests, which encompass human immunogenetics in the context of infectious, inflammatory, and neoplastic diseases, and type I IFN-mediated inflammation.